Grand Fantasia: The Snap
by Phantazm
Summary: Ever get tired of visiting the same guys for the same quests? Well, how do you think THEY feel about it? Caret-think R. Lee Ermey-lets you know. WARNING: nuclear F-bombs dropped mercilessly, adult language, and marginal insanity.


_Grand Fantasia: The Snap_

Elkurion and Kadama, aspiring adventurers both, strode mightily into the clearing in Sprites' Forest, their names and guild affiliations glowing brightly above their heads.

Elkurion, soon to be a powerful and respected warrior (or at least level 12) stood before the tired-looking Caret. "Hail, adventurer! Be at ease, for we have gathered nine of the fruit you have sent us to obtain! Behold!"

"Though the man-eating flowers attacked with the ferocity of tigers, they were no match for the spells of Kadama or the steel of Elkurion!" The wizard puffed up his scrawny chest and beamed proudly at Caret.

For his part, Caret fixed them both with a world-weary stare. "Are you fucking serious? Who talks like that any more?"

Slightly deflated, the adventurers suffered a momentary phase of uncertainty. "But, noble adventurer, you did send us to gather these for you, did you not? And but mere moments ago?"

Caret sighed. "Yes, I did. I do that to every slack-jawed nimrod that stomps into my clearing with his ten-copper sword and thrift store armor. I keep hoping that it will keep you idiots the hell away from me, but somehow you keep surviving and coming back to give me all this friggin' fruit."

"Then why send us on such quests?" Kadama asked.

"I don't frickin' know!" Caret exploded. "All I do all day, every day, is stand around this God-forsaken clearing and send numbnuts like you two out to collect fruit or dew from these damn sprites or something. And isn't that a frickin' joke? I send you into the mountains! To collect dew! From sprites! Oh, the humor! If only my primary care doctor was named Pepper it would be FUCKING HILARIOUS!"

Fidgeting, Elkurion managed to mumble, "I fear your humor is lost on me, sir."

"Well, ain't that a surprise," Caret snapped, pulling a cigarette from a pouch and lighting it. "Too bad for you jackoffs I ran out of knock-knock jokes about ten years ago."

"But why do you send us on these quests rather than simply telling us to leave?" Kadama tried to look contrite but merely looked like he was about to cry. "Would that not ease the burden of such repetitious travails?"

The look Caret gave him could have lit a cigarette on its own. From five feet. "I haven't got the slightest idea, fruitcake. You see Jody over there? All she does all day is send schmucks like you on quests like mine. 'Go take this to Red Ridge.' 'Go get samples of these flowers.' Sometimes more idiots come out of that transporter and bring me shit I really don't need, like medicine from some dork named Angelo in Ancient Forest, then they run off to do more shit."

The adventurers backed up a little bit, putting distance between themselves and the obviously cranky Caret. Kadama spoke first. "_Dude, WTF is up w/him?_"

"_IDK_," Elkurion replied. "_ur guess gud az myn_."

"I can see what you assholes are saying!" Caret screamed. "What, you think it's frickin' clever whispering to each other when those Goddamned word balloons pop up over your Goddamned heads? And quit speaking like freaking retards!"

The two adventurers jumped. "_Shit. Wrong chat_," Kadama whispered.

"Yeah, wrong damn chat," Caret snapped. "What is up with this friggin' world, anyway? From the moment I opened my eyes until now, it's been nonstop with the 'go get fruit' and 'go get this and that.' I don't want to send you idiots out to get it, but something just compels me to. Maybe it's a fucking neurosis. Or psychosis. Whatever it is, someone needs to go on a quest to bring Doctor Frickin' Phil's hairy ass in here so I can write a novel for Oprah and make a Lifetime frickin' movie out of my sorry ass life!"

"_Dude snapped_," Elkurion whispered, this time in the correct chat.

"Every chat is the wrong chat, dumbass! I'm an in-game character! I see everything you noobs are saying even when you're not talking to me! That whisper shit only shields you from other players, not from me!"

"Then pray tell, noble adventurer—…"

"And don't start that shit with me again! What are you, thirteen?"

"Um, we're in character," Elkurion began.

"You're in your parents' basement intruding on my world, you jerkoff! You've probably got uTorrent running in the background downloading Japanese tentacle porn, haven't you?"

Kadama started. "How the fuck…"

"Your graphics card and processor can't keep up with this shit," Caret snarled. "You two walk like you're receiving electroconvulsive therapy through anal probes and I can see right through you."

Zardoz, a slightly higher-level archer, approached Caret with a bag filled with fruit. "Adventurer Caret! I have brought…"

Caret slapped the bag out of Zardoz' hands. "Yeah, you brought me fucking fruit! Big surprise! Look around you, Einstein! What you see, huh? Yeah. Fruit! I got more fruit surrounding me than a reporter at Burning Man held in downtown San Francisco! I don't need no more Goddamned fruit!"

"Then why did you…?"

"Get the fuck out of my sight, you cheap-ass Robin Hood punk!" Zardoz scampered off, disappearing into the brush. "Hope one of those tigers humps his leg."

"You know this is a game?"

Lighting another cigarette, Caret snorted. "What do you think? You putzes appear and disappear left and right, some of you lag so bad you stand like statues while butterfly-looking sprites rape your unresponsive asses, numbers appear every time you poke something with your damn swords…what would you think it is?"

Elkurion spoke up hesitantly, somehow compelled to speak to this Caret character. "But you're not supposed to know it. You're a scripted…an applet or something."

"A script? An applet? What I am is the virtual version of the fuckwit who stands out in front of the KFC or Rent-To-Own shop in a frickin' chicken suit and dances to get your attention, okay? That's me. I'm his online avatar and I don't do shit but ask for fruit and give you feebs money for it. Welcome to my world!"

"An avatar of a guy in a chicken suit?" Kadama sounded puzzled and triggered the script to make his character act confused.

"Well, I sure as shit ain't James Fucking Cameron Avatar with his blue-skinned catgirls from space, am I? And quit doing that with your damn character! God, what I wouldn't give for a +9 Button of ALT-F4 right now!"

Now it was Elkurion's turn to come _thisclose_ to crying. "Why do you have to be so hurtful?"

"What do you expect? All day, every day, ever since I first came online, it's 'gimme fruit, get me dew, go do this and that,' and how many times have you two dimwits done it? Huh? I know you," he pointed at Kadama, "have done it about six times with different characters, and this is your fourth time." He glared spears at Elkurion. "Shit is tedious!"

"Now how could you know that?" Elkurion asked, shocked.

Now Caret moved a little. His hand lashed out and yanked the word balloon away from Elkurion's head. "See that? On the back of your little bit of dialog? Yeah. That goes to the server and see that bit there? IP address, sparky. Yeah, I got you two figured." He tossed the deflated word balloon aside and it faded from sight.

"Um, sir?" Now that the in-game dynamic had changed and the paradigm had just been not only shifted but knocked out, sodomized, and sent home crying to its mother, the two adventurers were lost and confused. "How are we supposed to level without doing quests?"

"Dungeon crawl, you losers! Those sprites and tigers and all that stuff on Kaslow Plain? They're oozing with experience points! Get up there on Belcar Plateau or Black Swamp and as far as you two candy-asses are concerned, the monsters practically shit XP!"

"What's dungeon crawling?" Elkurion asked.

This nearly sent Caret into a suicidal spiral. He'd have killed himself if he hadn't been so sure he'd just respawn in place, surrounded by virtual fruits. And nuts. Lots of nuts. Nothing but nuts all day, asking for quests and shit… "Boy, back in your daddy's day, they were _gamers_. They had to roll their own dice and track their own hit points, you sissified, spineless wussies! They would invade dungeons armed only with a piece of paper, some dice, and a pencil! They didn't have 'high potions' or 'elixirs.' No. They fueled their quests on Twinkies and Mountain Dew! They would wage wars and bring down demonic hordes with nothing but a d20 and sheer balls, and you limp-wristed, pickle-puffing, nail-polished, emo-clothes-wearing, Hannah Montana-watching pansies come in here trying to level up by collecting fucking _fruit?_ Gary Fucking Gygax is spinning in his grave like a nuclear-powered dreidel."

"Who?"

"_Get the fuck out of my clearing!_" Caret screamed. "You two jackoffs just blew the shit out of your saving throw! OUT!"

As the two adventurers' avatars ran into the distance, Caret noticed the sun "setting" as it always did, in three steps of dark, darker, and poof. Dark. It also made it easier for him to see the countdown appearing in front of him, reversed so as to appear normal to everyone else around him except, of course, him.

It was time to shut down for server maintenance.

"Good," he fumed, reaching past a pile of fruit to pick up a duffel bag. "I only have a couple of hours, but I'm taking a damn vacation. Gonna find me a HALO server. Master Chief doesn't put up with this shit. Busts a cap in whatever pisses him off…"

Jody, freed from her constraints at the far side of the clearing, walked over to join him. "Well, we're free for another few hours. What'cha wanna do now?"

"Later," Caret said, looking over his shoulder as the virtual world shut down. "Even though those two idiots are gone, I have this feeling someone's still looking in on us."

"So what do we do?"

Caret smiled. "I'll tell you after they log off."

_So log off, already!_


End file.
